My Crimson Memories
by Asterous Disaster
Summary: Nightmares of Artemis's past keep her up at night. Thank God for Wally...and unlimited long distance calling.  Sequel/Companion fic to 'Deliver Me'. Not necessary for understanding, but it is alluded to in here


**AN: **I don't own Young Justice or any DC affiliated characters.

The following story takes place sometime after the events of **Deliver Me **(my other fanfic). This involves a dream sequence that plays on the speculations made about Artemis's past. So it's really just my opinion of what might have been. I don't know how old she is the first part, but very young I think.

That being said I don't really know how I feel about this...

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><p><em><strong>My Crimson Memories<strong>_

_Screams could be heard through the walls of the darkened room. The little girl rocked back and forth on the cold linoleum floor, curled tightly into a ball. Her small hands clutched her ears in a futile effort to block out all the noise._

_"No, no, no my little darling. The more you ignore it the louder they'll make her scream." Hot stale breath fanned against the blonde pixie's face. A familiar presence loomed in front of her. " You don't want the bad men to hurt Mommy even more?"_

_"Daddy, stop it. Please, Daddy?" The small girl whimpered, trying to pull away from her father before her._

_"Sweetheart, you know as well as I do that Daddy doesn't want to hurt Mommy. If you just listened to Daddy. Only you can stop it, darling." The girl's father pulled her up off the floor._

_"Remember Rosie? Your puppy? You wouldn't listen to Daddy then and what happened?"_

_Not wanting the answer the girl shook her head and looked away. He asked again, "Remember?"_

_"Rosie's gone." She choked out softly._

_"That right, my precious girl." The man said , stroking the soft blonde locks on the little girl's head. "You don't want what happened to Rosie to happen to Mommy, do you?"_

_Tears began to leak out of big blue eyes as the child shook her head in negation._

_"Daddy, didn't think so. You know what I want you to do, right Sweetheart?"_

_She nodded as the flow of hot tears streaming down her round cheeks increased._

_"Good girl. Now come with me and, if all goes well, we'll put an end to Mommy's screams." The man said, gruffly grabbing the blonde's tiny hand in his rough larger one._

_He led her out of the room and down a dark corridor that was only illuminated by weakly flicking lights. They stopped before a solid metal door. Distantly down the hall the girl could hear the same woman sobbing, pleading with her captors._

_"Don't do this please! Can't you see she's just a little girl! How can you do this to your daughter? Force her to…" Her protest was ceased by a loud bang and a strangled sort of scream. Watery blue eyes turned to the burly man next to her. He softly stroked her hair, whispering. "Just do as Daddy says, Sweetheart."_

_The man pushed her into the room, handing her a crowbar and smiling sinisterly as he shut and locked the door behind them. In the center of the room was a bound and gagged man. Scrawny and harmless the child wondered what he could have possible done to anger her father. A scream could be heard through the walls, a cough from her father behind her, the quivering gaze of a frightened innocent._

_"I'm sorry." Her soft voice said. A dull thud echoed in the confines of the room._

_"I have to protect Mommy." Salty tears were replaced by drops of warm metallic blood. The man behind her burned her mind with his sadistic laughter._

_"I'm so sorry."_

_Crimson rained throughout the room._

_"That was magnificent, Darling!" Rough, calloused hands picked up the red stained child as he carried her out of the deadly quite room. "See was that so hard?"_

_"No, Dad." The sweet girlish tone sounded empty and hollow._

_"Good, so next time we are going to listen to Daddy no matter what right? After all, I heard your little friend Jenny's going to visit. You wouldn't want her to find out what happens when you disobey Daddy, do you?"_

_Dirty red blonde locks moved with the force of the child's negation._

_"Good, sweet child. Always listen to Daddy, okay? Always"_

Always

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><p>Artemis woke up gasping. A shaking hand reached over to grasp the glass of water by her bedside. Clenching her eyes shut, as she sat up to drink it, she tried to will away the images from her dream, <em>memory<em>, that still flashed in the visual foreground over her mind. Collapsing back onto her pillow, fingers fumbled on the floor for the black touchscreen with red and yellow stickers on it. Without much thought she pressed the redial button and waited, listening to the rings and attempting to calm her breathing as much as possible.

"Arty?"

"Hey, Walman." She whispered against the phone.

He yawned. "What's going on? You _do_ know that it's like 3:30 a.m. in Central?"

"Damn, you're right. Sorry, I'll let you go back to sleep."

"Oh shit! No don't hang up. I didn't mean it like that. Is everything ok?"

"I'm _fine_. It's not important." She sighed.

"Yeah, that's why you called me at…what time is it in Gotham right now anyways?"

"Wally, it's stupid. Forget it… We have a mission later, I'll see you then." Fingers reached up to press the end call button on the device, when his voice rang out in the silence of her room.

"It was one of _those_ dreams, wasn't it?"

Silence greeted his inquiry.

"The ones you've been having since we got back. Ever since you…Do you want to talk about it?"

"No. Wally, you should really get sleep. I'm sorry for waking you up."

"Wait! I'm already up, you know. And I…I uh… Did you know I had dinner at Uncle Barry's today?"

"You did?" She asked, turning away from the receiver to stifle a yawn. He was distracting her, she knew it, he knew it—she just really didn't care right now.

"Yeah, today was his Birthday and it was really funny 'cause mom decided to make her special pie. The pecan one, you know? And I didn't know it was made especially for Uncle Barry. So I decided to have a piece before dinner. I know, I know. The amount of food I intake is disgusting. But I was just _so _hungry. So one piece became the whole pie and…"

"Artemis?"

"Artiiieeeee—?"

"Did you fall asleep on me?"

"Sweet dreams, Artemis."

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><p>The blacklight that lit up the phone next to the sleeping archer blinked off to conserve energy. Despite the darkness of the screen, the small digits counting the length of the call didn't stop until well after the Gotham sunlight made them legible once more.<p>

"Good morning"

"Morning, Arty."

_Sweet dreams indeed. _


End file.
